216 THE NEW YORKER, MARCH 21, 1994 of protection. At the same time, the line between tabloids and respectable publi- cations has blurred, so that stars have to worry about the likelihood that damag- ing gossip will appear in many more outlets than before. It is this anxiety that Pat Kingsley works to relieve. "With Pat," Sally Field once told the Los An- geles Times, "a sort of safeness came over me 1'd never felt before." In a reception area down the hall from Kingsley's office is an old photo- graph of Louis B. Mayer, looking happy and fatherly, with all the M -G- M stars arrayed around him, looking happy and safe under his care. Part of the protective feeling you get from that photograph is preserved and cherished at PMK. If you are Jodie Foster and you're doing the "Today" show and you want to make sure that Bryant Gumbel doesn't ask about John Hinckley, Jr., you call for an artillery strike by Pat Kingsley in advance. (If you're Bryant Gumbel, you go ahead and ask anyway.) On the other hand, if you are a guest of Jay Leno's, and you're boring and unfunny, it's part of Pat Kingsley's job to go up to you afterward and say how fabulous you were. "I have two personalities," Kingsley told me. "One with clients, and another with the press. You really are there to serve the clients' needs. You have to be soft with them" In her dealings with the press, Kingsley has a different personality, which is not so soft. People whose livelihood depends in call her regularly during the intermission of "The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe," her one-woman Broadway show, to talk about how the performance was going, or anything else that was on her mind. "Pat would look at her watch and say, 'I've got to get back to the office for Lily's call,' " some- one who used to work for Kingsley says. Kingsley is also friends with Candice Bergen, whom she has represented Since 1966, and with Sally Field and Teri Garr. "Pat's a real person, and she's will- ing to say, 'Hey, Candy Bergen is a real , " G ld "' L ' person, arr to me. et s not treat her like a bimbo,' which, as we know, is how actresses often get treated. She makes people be fair. For a long time, the media weren't fair to actresses, and she makes them be fair." Kingsley's desk is an old blackjack table, covered with green felt. It has a cutout part where the dealer used to stand, and Kingsley is often to be found standing there. On the day I visited her, the room was jammed with Christmas gifts from clients: I had to move a cellophane-wrapped wicker basket of wine and gourmet foods from Jodie Fos- ter In order to make space for myself on the couch. Picking up a telephone mes- sage from a stack on her desk, Kingsley called out through her office door for her assistant, Ginny Rankin, to dial a number. Kingsley was wearing a tele- phone headset with a long cord attached to it, and her hair fell across her face. When the call went through, Kingsley said, "Hello, is she there?" That is how she usually starts tele- phone conversations: the sound of her voice is her introduction. "It's Pat Kingsley." "Is it fact-checked?" Kingsley said into the phone while examining the contents of a folder and then hunting for something under a stack of papers. Her habit of looking for things while she's talk- ing on the phone gives her voice a vaguely un- settling quality you feel a little as if she were hunting you. "Well, would they fact-check one way or another on access to Kingsley's clients sometimes complain that she is too protective. Her efforts on behalf ofT om Cruise have succeeded in making Cruise almost completely inac- cessible to the press, and at times even to the people Cruise works for The standard contract that an actor signs with a studio says that the actor is obliged to do "reasonable publicity" to help promote the film. Once a studio has paid Cruise more than ten million dollars to make a movie, it naturally feels that it's reasonable to ask him to help promote it, and is surprised to hear from Pat Kingsley that this is in fact not rea- sonable. Recently, in an effort to gain more leverage with its stars, Walt Dis- ney Studios has been working on new contracts that would spell out the pub- licity the star has to do, and would with- hold a portion of the star's fee until it is done. Studio publicists sometimes have to call on studio executives to negotiate with Kingsley or, if possible, to go around Kingsley and appeal directly to the star. A studio executive at Disney said about making a movie with one of Kingsley's clients, ''You have to make friends with Pat Kingsley very early in h " t e process. O N the walls of Kingsley's office are a picture of Tom Cruise and Kingsley together, and a picture of Jodie Foster, and a picture of Lily Tomlin. Foster and Tomlin are friends as well as clients of Kingsley's; Tomlin used to - ';/ '-- , ----- --, , !? - ... c< 4 5 (;fD S5